Research & Portfolio Management Engineering - Associate

AQR is a global investment firm built at the intersection of financial theory and practical application. We strive to deliver concrete, long-term results by looking past market noise to identify and isolate the factors that matter most, and by developing ideas that stand up to rigorous testing. By putting theory into practice, we have become a leader in alternative strategies and an innovator in traditional portfolio management since 1998.

AQR takes a systematic, research-driven approach, applying quantitative tools to process fundamental information and manage risk. Our clients include institutional investors, such as pension funds, insurance companies, endowments, foundations and sovereign wealth funds, as well as financial advisors.

AQR’s Research Engineering team is seeking a strong technical engineer to strengthen our business initiatives in QRD, focused on our Global Stock Selection group.

The Global Stock Selection (GSS) Quantitative Research Development (QRD) group enables and supports Global Stock Selection Research at AQR. GSS QRD maintains a sophisticated infrastructure and tooling environment in support of the business, as well as a complex production process including orchestrating numerous workflows with large amounts of data. QRD is responsible for signal generation and model construction as well as many other aspects of portfolio construction that go into the running of our strategies. The QRD team works closely with researchers to create new systematic investment strategies and refine existing ones, applying technology expertise along with a practical understanding of markets to implement research ideas and develop systems that further enable the business.

As a software engineer at AQR, you will build or extend our:

• Scalable, AWS-based storage and computing infrastructure

• Generalized research platform

• Data ingestion and validation engine

• Model computation and signal generation pipeline

• Machine learning / Natural Language Processing pipeline

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related technical field.

• 3-5 years of professional software engineering experience building production software.

• Strong programming skills in Python; experience with C++ is a plus.

• Experience developing software on Linux.

• Experience building cloud-native applications using AWS or similar cloud platforms.

• Experience working with distributed systems, scalable applications, and large-scale data processing.

• Proficiency with SQL and experience working with structured data at scale.

• Hands-on experience building or integrating native AI applications, including practical experience working with large language models (LLMs), AI agents, or AI-assisted workflows.

• Solid understanding of the strengths, limitations, and practical tradeoffs of LLMs, agentic systems, and modern AI technologies.

• Ability to take open-ended business or technical problems, work with stakeholders to clarify requirements, and develop practical, well-reasoned technical solutions.

• Comfortable operating in environments where requirements evolve, exercising sound engineering judgment rather than relying on detailed specifications.

• Strong software engineering fundamentals, including system design, testing, code quality, and maintainability.

• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to explain technical concepts and work effectively across teams.

• Experience supporting quantitative research, machine learning platforms, or financial technology applications is a